


And to the Victors...

by Terminallydepraved



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Intercrural Sex, M/M, Monster sex, corpse ash abounds, demon!lucio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 10:48:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12862926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terminallydepraved/pseuds/Terminallydepraved
Summary: “How could they forget their beloved Count?” a voice asked.A voice that wasn’t Thraish’s.





	And to the Victors...

**Author's Note:**

> The working title for this was Yiff Me Like a Hurricane but i was told i wasnt allowed to title it that lol. So, we made do. I replayed the game and got to Lucio’s rooms and idk if anyone else found that scene as sensual as i did but man. Kinda wanna fuck the goatman now. Have at it, maybe youll feel the same too after this.

Once Thraish started coughing, it was impossible to stop.

He choked on the thick dust, the ashen remains clinging to his throat as if determined to take him to the other side as well. Tears ran down his cheeks, the ash melting into it to caress his face with every half-smothered sob. Awful. This was so awful, but without knowing how he’d even arrived in these forgotten rooms, Thraish had no idea how to go about escaping whatever ghosts held him in their ashen arms.

“Gods,” he mouthed, too strained to speak, too stifled to verbalize the horror he felt at the oppressive weight of the crypt around him. Why had nobody seen to this? Why had nobody taken care of the ash, the filth, the charred remains of Count Lucio still resting in his faded, ruined bed? How could they forget the Count in his room, lying dead and gone with no proper burial?

“How could they forget their beloved Count?” a voice asked.

A voice that wasn’t Thraish’s.

Thrash grew cold, his ragged coughs swallowed in the wake of the sudden fear that he was not alone in this burnt place. He stared at the floor, arms tight around his body, neck prickling when a sudden warmth ghosted against his skin. A short burst of warmth, an echo of a laugh--

Someone was breathing on his neck in a place where no one should be breathing at all.

“Noticed me, have you?”

The voice… It wasn’t real. Not really. An echo? A memory, almost. It hung heavy in the air but didn’t linger. A voice without a voice. A thought spoken against his ear.

“Don’t act like I’m not real,” it said, a croon, a loathed caress that carried no warmth. “I am.”

“What are you?” Thraish whispered, eyes searching for a sign while his body froze in place. He knew it was behind him. He could feel it hovering just an inch away, too hot to be ignored. “Who are you?”

It laughed. It laughed a laugh that shouldn’t be felt, but still Thraish felt it. It vibrated in his bones, stirring the ash around his feet. The ash still caught in his throat ached in time to it all, as if it longed to join the rest no matter how it had to free itself. Thraish’s heart hammered in his chest, just a bird hellbent on dashing itself to death against the bars of its cage.

“Who, not what,” it said, the not-voice coming from on high as if it stood taller than Thraish, looming overhead. Thraish ached to look up, but couldn’t. If he did, he might scream. “Always who. Who do you think? You’re clever, aren’t you? Be clever. Tell me.”

Thraish was too scared to think. Whatever it was, whoever it was, held a sense of wrong about them. Something innately wrong that churned the contents of Thraish’s stomach like angry waves in an ill-tempered ocean. A bead of sweat rolled down his cheek, down his neck, cutting through the ash on his skin to leave a path that disappeared in the hem of his shawl. The presence behind him was laughing, entertained by his fear. The burning heat grew closer, and Thraish took a step forward on instinct, feeling as if he were being led.

Where, he wasn’t sure. To hell, perhaps. To the place where ghosts moved freely, and where wayward apprentices lost their way.

“What do you want with me?” he asked, his hands tightening into fists at his side. They were approaching a wall now. To pin him in? To cut him off from the door he couldn’t see? He summoned up his courage and turned his head a fraction of an inch, needing to see what it was that held him in thrall.

A low warning growl rattled the ash in Thraish’s clothes. He froze, muscles locked, heart pounding like a rabbit’s. “Don’t turn around,” the voice ordered, absolute in its command. “Face forward. I won’t tell you again.”

Thraish forced himself to look forward. Red eyes stared back at him, unblinking and faded in the wake of the ash dulling the once-vibrant paint. The portrait stood as tall as he did, mounted to the dark, blackened wall as a beacon of what this room once was.

Count Lucio, draped in his ermine and silks, golden arm a gleaming symbol of power, of might. Thraish swallowed, shivering despite the heat at his back. He had a feeling he knew who occupied this space with him.

Only one man could hold this much presence beyond the grave.

This portrait was similar to the one that hung in the banquet hall. The red was the same, that beautiful, entrancing red heavy in Lucio’s eyes, in the cape hanging from his strong arms. Thraish stared at it, and for a moment he forgot what loomed behind him. The unnatural heat enveloped him like an embrace. His eyes fell to half-mast. His heart pounded, but no longer from fear.

“Go ahead,” that voice murmured, stirring the hair at the back of Thraish’s neck. “Touch it.”

Cheeks burning, heart hammering, Thraish did as he was told. He brought up his hand, tracing the air above the portrait. The white ash was thick here too, softer than silk when he finally gathered the courage to touch the surface of the painting. Another burst of warmth hit the back of his neck. A pleased hum echoed between his ears, a burning, heavy heat stroking down his spine in time to the movements of Thraish’s hand.

“Such power I held,” the voice went on, confirming Thraish’s guess. “Such power and such poise. But you know power, don’t you, witch? You know everything, and yet nothing at all.”

Thraish couldn’t stop shivering, even with the overwhelming heat against his spine. How could this be? Count Lucio, dead by flames yet still here… somehow. Thraish had a feeling if he turned, if he defied the order given to him, he might see something far from what the portrait showed. It didn’t escape him how Lucio referred to himself in the past tense. Once powerful, once something to be feared and worshipped.

“Nothing to say to that?”

Thraish swallowed, closing his eyes as a clawed, massive hand curled around his throat. His skin burned from the heat, but he felt no weight, no real physical presence to inhibit his breathing.

“Do you want compliments?” he asked, nearly swallowing his tongue when the beast behind him laughed in his ear. He opened his eyes and stared at the floor, at the burnt wall, at the ruby eyed Count staring back at him from the painting. “You already know how handsome you are. You hardly need me to say it too.”

“Need and want are two very different things.” The hand traveled lower, abandoning his throat to stroke an intangible path down his chest. The heat pouring off the ghostly limb scorched Thraish through his thin shawl, through his old shirt. When it settled just beneath his navel, his cheeks burned even hotter. “I don’t need anything anymore. But what I want… Oh, but what I want…”

Something stirred the stray locks of hair over Thraish’s ear. It felt startlingly like a huff of breath, like a laugh held back, but only just. “I want you, Thraish,” he declared, his voice just a whisper of intent. “I want you in my bed the way I never had you in life.”

Thraish… Thraish didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know what to say. His mouth opened, and then closed, and then opened again, a sputtering, embarrassing stammer coming when the words wouldn’t. The thing behind him wasn’t human. That much he knew. And yet… And yet it wanted him in its bed?

Lucio laughed at him again, something slow and dark and a touch lascivious against his ear.

“You color at the truth,” he teased, a massive hand fixing to Thraish’s hip. “Just as you did before. You resisted me then. Told me no, now wasn’t the time.”

Warm breath teased Thraish’s ear, the Count’s voice a smile. “Time holds no meaning now, Thraish.”

The sound of his name, the warmth assaulting his body-- Thraish shuddered pitifully, body responding to it all when he knew he should want to run. Why? Why now? Why him? The hand was moving, weightless but still so hot. He hung his head and felt a breath of a laugh against the back of his neck, stirring the loose hair falling from his braid.

If he said yes… Thraish swallowed, hating how he was considering it. If he said yes… No one would ever know. No one would ever need to know how he surrendered himself to whatever phantom this was, just for a moment, for a memory he might hold onto.

“Please,” Thraish heard himself say, his voice nothing but a whisper in the darkness, stirring the ash floating like dust motes in the air. “Please, I want it.”

“Then come,” he said simply, taking the heat with him when he deigned to slip away. Silent as the night, Lucio vanished from Thraish’s senses. All that remained was a single finger of warmth coaxing Thraish towards the bed.

Thraish closed his eyes, took in a breath that tasted of burnt, forgotten ash, and let it out just as slowly. He took a step back, body alive with an energy he couldn’t resist. He stared at the portrait as he took another step, and then another. Those red eyes were watching him, those full lips smirking in victory. Beautiful red, he thought, beholden to the Count’s everything. Was that red as beautiful now as it had been then?

He was turning his head before he quite realized what he was doing, or why it was probably a terrible idea.

Nothing, nothing but darkness, nothing but the ruined mausoleum standing testament to Lucio’s once glorious memory. It was only out of the corner of his eye that he caught a glimpse of what held him, of what longed to hold him closer, and what Thraish saw sent a note of fear straight through him.

The Count was not the Count any longer. Not how he had been, at least, but perhaps… Perhaps now he was who he was meant to be the whole time. Tall, broad, covered in a thick coat of shaggy white fur-- Lucio stood more beast than man, his eyes a glowing, pervasive red, his head crowned with a pair of horns that looked sharp enough to gore.

Thraish froze in place, heart hammering, palms sweating. What happened to turn him into this… this creature? There had to be an answer, but there was no way to think when the bed was right there.

All it took was a rough push to send Thraish the rest of the way there. The bed was cold, but the Count was warm. Warm to the point of burning. Thraish closed his eyes, hiding his face in his clenched hands. The ash rose up in a cloud, itching at his nose until he worried he might sneeze. Maybe he should have laid down on his back instead of his front. If they were about to do what he thought they were doing, he would rather look the monster in the eye than bite sheets made heavy by corpse dust.

But Lucio seemed to have his own plans, plans that Thraish was in no position to argue with. Before Thraish could think to roll over, or even to look over his shoulder, the beastly spectre was mounting him. The creature’s lone hand buried itself in the folds of Thraish’s trousers, dragging them down his legs to tangle around his boots. Rough, shaggy fur brushed his inner thighs in a ghostly tease, both there and yet not in a way that felt entirely too much like walking through a cobweb.

Thraish burned from his ears to his toes, the overwhelming heat of the Count doing more to keep him warm than the embarrassment ever could.

“Pretty, so pretty,” Lucio crooned, his red-eyed gaze heavy in its perusal. “A beauty befitting my old self. How I wanted you then.”

“Why do you keep saying such things?” Thraish whispered, the words not making any sense. He tried to look back, to see the face of what held him, but the clawed hand beside his head moved to the back of his neck, pinning him in place. Thraish whined, body on fire with want, with fear. The once-sheer material of the bedding felt so good against his cock, the not-quite-weight of Lucio even better.

“How else should I say it? To think this is how you take me,” he chuckled, pressing something hard, hot, and frighteningly solid between Thraish’s thighs like the ghost he certainly didn’t feel anymore. “In this form, in this way. I was just as dangerous then as I am now. What does this say about you, I wonder?”

 _Perhaps we should ask the cards_ , the last voice of reasons jeered between Thraish’s ears. It sounded far too much like Asra, far too much like the common sense Thraish had evidently abandoned for whatever promise of pleasure this moment brought him. The fear was still there, still curled up in the pit of his stomach, but it was getting so much easier to ignore it in the wake of the heat. God, what was he doing? Corpse-ash coated his tongue, but he didn’t seem to care anymore. He was too hard to care, and Lucio, Count Lucio, dead as he was, seemed eager enough to indulge him.

A warning growl, bestial and dark, chased Thraish from his thoughts as the monster began to move.

There was no way to do this properly, no way to take it further than it had already gone. Thraish pressed his thighs together, earning himself another growl that seemed to vibrate through his entire body. The heat pouring off Lucio was intense, the friction just as hot. Fucking between Thraish’s thighs was a poor facsimile of what they could be doing, but there was no way to complain when it felt as good as it did.

Thraish tried to hold back on letting his pleasure be known. He bit his lip, closing his eyes when he tasted the chalky ash on his lips. A shudder rattled through him, followed by a short, half-swallowed moan. He wasn’t entirely sure what lay between his thighs. It didn’t feel… It didn’t feel like it should, if it was what he thought it to be. He grabbed a handful of his hair and let out a low groan, every thrust rolling whatever it was against his own cock, teasing it with the burning heat and compressed intangibility scorching his inner thighs.

“You like that?” Lucio growled, his single hand fisting the sheets at Thraish’s head. The ash didn’t move, didn’t react at all to his touch. It seemed to move like the surface of a pond, rippling and then settling wherever his touch landed. “You come to me, to my rooms. Now, but not then? Oh, you wasted so much time, Thraish. The fun we could’ve had. The ways I would have had you.”

Thraish couldn’t handle the note of wistfulness lingering in the Count’s voice. It didn’t make sense. None of this made sense. He was fairly certain he didn’t know Lucio. Not anymore than anyone else ever did, living beyond the palace walls. But like this, mounted as he was, the insidious voice crooning in his ear, Thraish doubted. He doubted everything he knew, and certainly doubted what he didn’t.

If there was one thing he didn’t doubt, though, it was the utter want Lucio seemed to hold for him.

Want was simple. Want was easy to understand, especially when Thraish felt it too.

“Please,” he said, just a breath, just a sigh in the air. “Please. Lucio, please. Tell me what you want of me.” Maybe then Thraish would know what lingered between them, what it was that connected them even in death.

The pace increased, Thraish choking on his tongue as the friction and heat licked at his aching length. His thighs would be scalded by the end of this. Lucio didn’t care. He lowered himself fully against Thraish’s back, his subtle weight somehow so stifling beneath his overwhelming heat. “I want every ounce of you,” he spoke, his voice echoing between Thraish’s ears, there and yet not but still so loud, so commanding. “Every. Last. Ounce.”

With every word, Lucio fucked harder, skidding Thraish along the dusty sheets. His cock rolled against the mattress, slick and hot and flushed. He let out a needy cry, woefully high pitched, painfully wanton. It echoed in the room, stirring the ash, breaking the sacrosanct quiet the room had once held. This was… It was too much. He wouldn’t last, and he knew Lucio wouldn’t be far behind either.

“I’d fuck you so hard, Thraish,” Lucio went on, never once stuttering in his rut. “So hard. I’d hear you scream for me, beg for me. You’d love that, wouldn’t you? Begging me for the mercy you crave, for my touch? So sweet you’d be for me--”

Thraish let out a choked cry when the ghostly sting of teeth nipped the back of his neck. There was nothing there. Nothing at all, but this pain, this horrible, mind-numbing pleasure was too real.

“I’d fuck you until you remembered,” he promised, his voice a dark whisper sent to the worst parts of Thraish’s being. “Until you remembered how hard I used to try.”

And then Thraish was coming, obliterating any worry, any thoughts he might have had to give him pause. Ash coated his tongue and stung his throat on the way down, but it was easy to ignore amidst the pleasure. Lucio growled, growled low enough to vibrate the air between them, his every move made with intent. He wanted this. He wanted it so much, and Thraish shivered as the Count took what he’d longed for, unable to believe even now that it was him. That it’d always been him.

“You want it too. I can smell it on you, pounding away in that blood of yours,” the beast crooned, lost to his pleasure, to the animalistic need guiding him. “Oh, why did you ever resist me? I would have given you such sweet memories. So sweet you’d never forget them.”

Thraish moaned brokenly, too gone to pay any mind to the words Lucio spoke. The thrusts were erratic, the rhythm abandoned, or maybe just forgotten. Lucio grunted. He growled, his warm, burning not-breath kissing Thraish’s ear, his heavy-yet-not body burning Thraish to the marrow of his bones. The fur was soft, but nothing else about him was. Not his voice, not his touch, and certainly not the orgasm tearing through the Count when Thraish grew bold enough to clench his thighs.

“Thraish,” The Count-- The bea-- _Lucio_ moaned.

The world seemed to slow down, and then it stopped entirely. Ash and dust stuttered in the air, and when Thraish chanced a look over his shoulder, he saw Lucio was as tangible as he was likely to get. Chest heaving, eyes burning, the beast against his back was nearly vibrating in pleasure. Thraish fought the urge to cover the clawed hand near his head with his own. It wouldn’t do any good. Nothing would. Not for a creature like Lucio.

The thought was sobering.

Thraish hung his head as Lucio slowly gathered himself, nuzzling the back of his neck with his long, snuffling snout. It felt good for all that it felt at all. Just warmth, and nothing more. Like walking past the baker’s ovens just as he opened it up. Lucio got up, and Thraish took stock of all that had been done to him. Perhaps it was a good thing no one dared step foot in this place. They wouldn’t notice the fresh cum now staining the blackened sheets.

As for what Lucio left behind, Thraish was at a loss. His thighs… They weren’t quite wet. He wasn’t sure what to call the feeling that lingered against his flushed, sensitive skin. The heat from Lucio’s body didn’t seem to want to dissipate from the place. It felt like liquid silk dripping down his legs, like something almost-but-not-quite-there running down his skin. Thraish longed to look, to see what it was for himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn around. Not with the demon standing behind him. Not when turning would mean looking Lucio in the eye after letting him do something like that to someone like him.

What would the rest say if they knew? What might they think of him then? He clenched his hands in the brittle, ashy sheets, too weightless to think long on it. The beastly spectre of the Count had had his fun, and Thraish didn’t need to pretend that he felt Lucio’s retreat. It was in the air, in the heavy, stifling air that settled in Thraish’s lungs like the ash inside him, claiming him in all the ways Lucio hadn’t.

“Good witch,” Lucio chuckled, his voice melting into the darkness as his heat turned cold. “Good.”

If there was one thing Thraish knew for certain, it was that he needed a bath.

The rest could wait.

It could wait until the world ended for all he cared.

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanna write human lucio trying to seduce thraish now and build on what i implied in this one. Sadly book projects are scheduled to resume once we hit december. Sigh. Had to format this on my phone cuz im impatient so if you see any issues, ill fix them later. Anyway, hit me up on tumblr if youd like to see more of my fandom work (terminallydepraved) or my original content (tdcloud). Until next time!


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